SMITCHing

A lot of really smart, well-trained folks are spending loads of time on Bell. Here's a good compilation of salient conversation about Love Wins . Credit to Rick McKinley for the link via Twitter.

In chapters two and three of his new book Love Wins A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived , Rob Bell get's into two out of his three promised topics. He tackles heaven first. Probably a good choice. Bell immediately begins to question popular evangelical notions of heaven as a literal place. He makes his exegesis accessible, something he's particularly good at. Anyone who is really interested in what the Scriptures mean, can sympathize with Bell's desire to question more recently accepted interpretations of what the Bible tells us of heaven and hell. The author is careful to offer much of his critique as leading questions, and I'm left with the resulting sense that he's constantly screwing up his face and asking, "WTF?" while writing this book. Is that bad? Is he wrong for doing that? No. He's doing exactly what Martin Luther and other early Reformers did. He's asking questions arising from his study of Scriptur...

Yesterday I snagged the digital edition of Rob Bel l's new book Love Wins A Book about Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person You Ever Lived . I love buying books for less than half of what they used to cost. And Bell's a star, so there's also that I'm-a-famous-author-now premium you pay for books like his in print. I plan to post about it here, responding chapter-by-chapter to what I'm reading. Having read his first book, Velvet Elvis , I'll admit that my tastes don't really run in Bell's direction, but I was intrigued enough by advance publicity to read his latest. The advance promotions stirred up a significant controversy among leading evangelicals. For example, John Piper upon hearing of the publisher's promotions tweeted " Farewell Rob Bell ". Before any of the most critical leaders had had a chance read it, they were sure that Bell had finally put his cards on the table and come out of the closet as a universalist. Maybe. ...